The Horrific Tale of Margaret Garner’s Attempt to Escape Slavery

Could you imagine being bought like furniture or having your entire family handed down like unwanted heirlooms? Slavery was a horrific life for blacks and one such story was turned into an opera. This story is about Margaret Garner who lived in Kentucky and was trying escape to Cincinnati Ohio.

The cold January air had turned the water on the Ohio River thick with gleaming ice and snow. Margaret had her four children with her in 1856 on a Sunday night. She was escaping Kentucky with her children because in Kentucky not one of her children had a life worth living.

In the 19th century the city of Cincinnati served as a gateway to freedom for the tens of thousands of blacks living in Kentucky. The journey from the slave state of Kentucky to the free state of Ohio was a dangerous journey. The Ohio River was often referred to as the River Jordon for the hope crossing it offered slaves.

Nearly 150 years ago Margaret Garner set inside a crowded courtroom and listened as hundreds of people shouted her name. Some calling her a saint others calling for her life, they were judging her for a sacrifice no Mother should have to make.

Garner was only 22 years old when she ran in record cold temperatures on January 27 1856 trying to get to Cincinnati. Led by her husband Robert, who was enslaved at a neighboring farm and in tow, were there four children aged from 10 months to 6 years old and Roberts, elderly Mother and Father. They climbed into a sleigh and glided over snow covered roads from Richwood to Covington Kentucky.

There plan was to cross the Ohio River into Cincinnati and stay briefly at the home of one of Garner’s free black relatives before disappearing into the Underground Railroad system and heading farther North.

But this plan was interrupted with horrific results. By sunrise a team of men led by Archibald Gaines who had been in pursuit of the Garner family reached the relatives home. They surrounded the home demanding Margaret and her family come out. Margaret was painfully aware that surrendering meant returning her children to capture and worse was the thought of her family being sold down river to even harsher conditions in the Deep South.

While her husband fired at the pursuers with a pistol. Margaret picked up a butcher knife and cut her two and half tear old daughters throat. She went after her two sons with a shovel before Gaines and his team apprehended her. They were shipped to a slave market in New Orleans.

While aboard the Steamboat to New Orleans the boat collided with another vessel throwing a number of people overboard including Margaret and her other daughter. When help finally arrived the daughter was gone drowned in the same Ohio River that weeks before they had crossed in search of freedom.

People still wonder if Margaret had a hand in her Daughters drowning. It is hard to picture a Mother taking her child’s her life but it is also equally as hard to imagine a Mother not having some measure of relief knowing her daughter would not have to endure the horrors of slavery.

Tragically there are countless stories just like this one that could be told. But gratefully slavery has been abolished so no more such stories will be created. Some say Margaret was nothing but a child killer but I ask you to think of this, what would you do if your child was being abused beyond imagination and raped? What if you could do nothing to prevent this? What if you knew your child was going to be sold and you would not be there to try and protect them and you knew where they were going was even worse trauma then what they had already experienced? What would you do?